Nathan Benaich - The State of AI, Transformer models across data sets, What does an AI startup look like, Obama's cloned voice, AI as the magic editing wand, The AI brain drain

Nathan Benaich is a General Partner at Air Street capital a investment firm investing in AI startups. When asking around in the European ecosystem his name came across several times as a thought leader in the AI space. I highly recommend you read the State of AI report which he co-authors. It’s an in depth report of about 100 pages long across Research, Industry, Politics and Safety.

Prior to founding Air Street Capital he was a scientist in residence at the investment firm PointNine for about 6 years.

During this episode we discuss his motivation and insight to start Air Street Capital in 2019 and how there were few to none VCs focusing exclusively on AI first startups, we talk about the power of AI models to make predictions across data sets and the increasing gap between academia and industry labs. We also discuss why AI should be on top of the political agenda and what does an AI first startup look like.

Enjoy!

FYI: We are launching a private network and peer-support group for CEOs working in the AI space in Europe. We already signed up some well-known tech CEOs from the ecosystem. The first gathering starts in September. If interested, sign up ⁠here⁠.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro to Nathan

(02:30) The key developments in AI in the last 12 months and the speed of development

(05:45) The maturation cycle of advanced technology and crossing the chasm from labs to consumers

(08:20) The only constraint to build software will be your creativity and not your capability to engineer

(09:00) The background and founding story of Air Street Capital

(13:45) How Transformer models work and their capability to learn and make predictions across domains

(17:30) Can we replicate a human mind?

(20:00) The gap between academia and industry labs and the interest by nation states to own the technology

(25:00) What does an AI first startup look like and tying your predictions to ROI

(28:00) What does a successful AI startup-team look like

(31:15) The moment of pleasure as an investor

(33:00) What was the driver for his success

(34:00) Advice to his younger self

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